“It’s never too late – never too late to start over, never too late to be happy.”— Jane Fonda

Too often recovery from an eating disorder or disordered eating seems to involve as many rules as living with an eating disorder/disordered eating itself.

But it doesn’t have to.

This site offers a body positive and food positive method of recovery:

no rules, except eating enough (which is more than you think), responding to all hunger (both mental and physical) and no exercise until you are healthy enough to get active again. No restrictions. This is about working with your body, not against it, to become energy-balanced and to reclaim your life back. This is about building a healthy relationship with food and your body, whatever size your body is naturally healthy at. This is about complete and utter freedom from your eating disorder/disordered eating and from diet culture. This is about leaving behind the preoccupation with food and weight, and making your life about your interests, passions, and hobbies.

Food is not the enemy.

No food should be off limits.

No hunger cue should be denied.

All food is good food: no food is inherently bad.

Eat whatever you want, whenever you want.

Listen to your body, and let it lead you to eat a varied and balanced diet.

Yes, that includes cake.

Our bodies naturally come in all different weights, shapes, and sizes.

A minimally “healthy” BMI is probably not a healthy weight for your own individual body. You do not want to end up forcing your body under its natural weight and struggling to maintain it forever after. That is not being free. You need to continue to eat enough and respond to your hunger for the rest of your life, and see where your body ends up at. Your body will take you to whatever your natural, healthy weight is, and maintain it. Effortlessly. Without any form of restriction whatsoever.

It’s time to start living again.

It’s time to stop wasting your life thinking about food, and start working towards a healthy, happy, ED-free you – a you that is not only rising above your eating disorder, but above diet culture too. It’s not just recovery; it’s a revolution.

Start working towards embracing all food, embracing your body at whatever size, and embracing life. And f!*$ anyone who tries to stop you.

“Miraculous things happen when you decide to do hard things. In spite of all the reasons not to. In spite of all the obstacles. In spite of all the things to blame. Follow, follow, follow your heart to the life you want. In the end, it is all yours to create.” – Erin Brown

Totally inspiring and helpful! I am at the stage of recovery of fully embracing eating intuitively as well as working intensely on my exercise addiction…listening to MY body. Part of my recovery is wanting to be an advocate for health and happiness BUT I mean WHOLE health…not the “health” we have been sold to by society.
So with the help of my dietician, tons of reading, and working through a 20 year battle with anorexia, bulimia, and anorexia athletica I know that I want to take a stand aginst the diet culture as well as finally let go of the last piece of the ED. Your writing inspired me once again to follow my heart into psychology, women’s studies, as well as find out how I can help more.

As the father of a 12 year old ED daughter, I can’t thank you enough for what you are doing. You have given my daughter the understanding she can’t get from the professionals and the assurance she can overcome the dragon in the garden. Much gratitude from across the pond.

Today in poetry class we read a poem called “shrinking women” and I almost cried, I didn’t want to talk in the discussion and the people in my class were referring to skinny as fit. And one tall girl said how she never went over 100 lbs in her life and then the teacher commented “but your passion is food (she likes to cook)” and everyone laughed . I am over 50 pounds more than I was last year and no one treats me the same as when I was skinny (105 pounds) so idk I just wanted to share this because it made me feel bad and no one would have thought the fat girl could connect to the message, if you want look up the poem most people were talking about the men taking up more space than the girls shrinking I think it’s bc they were scared to say it bc a lot of the girls in my class were skinny and I’ve never seen them eat other than gum and their Starbucks green tea I bet is zero calories

You’re so brave for opening up. It’s difficult to feel our struggle is valid if we’re not “skinny”, especially because we tend to feel people are judging. But of course you can relate to a poem: literature is for everyone, and only you know for sure what’s going on in your head.

Please keep fighting and don’t forget there are MANY out there who recognize how strong you are for fighting these demons. You’re gonna get better, you’ll see!!! And there’s absolutely no need to be skinny for that, even though it’s super hard to believe. “Keep making changes and the shift will happen.”

Thanks for this! It is wonderful! I’m a mother of a fully recovered 15 year old who was lucky to habe Early identification and family based treatment! Hard but worth it – low cost and family empowering. I’m also a recovered person myself (EDs are of course genetically linked biologically based brain disorders.. we also know now there is a metabolic issue as well!). I helped found World Eating Disorders Day and hope you will all join and promote on social media or in live events. http://Www.worldeatingdisordersday.org and on all social media! One note on the page – in addition to not avoiding hunger cues it’s also critical to eat theee meals and three snacks a day. Most people with anorexia and other EDs simply don’t HAVE normal hunger cues so regular routinized eating is critical to healing.

You make it sound so easy though…unfortunately living in this society doesn’t always make it easy or even possible for some people to be ok with being their ‘natural’ size. I don’t consider myself eating disordered because I enjoy food and know how to relax, but I also couldn’t deal with the depression and ostracizing that came with being my natural size and therefore lost weight (I was under the impression at the time that that would be healthier for me). For me I am genuinely happier now because I am confident, fit in clothes I like, and ‘accepted’ more, even though it’s true I don’t eat everything I want to most days which sucks. Some days I do, but I envy my friends who can stay the size I am or smaller and eat anything and everything every day. When will our thin-obsessed society and fatphobia truly end 😦 I know I’m a hypocrite, because although I can’t stand it, I equally can’t stand the treatment I get and social difficulties that comes with not following it..

Also, is it really true for everyone that losing weight is horrible and unhealthy? I was always happy with my weight loss until I started reading your blog, now I’m scared and conflicted. I always thought I was heavy before (as a child) because I had anxiety and often ate sweets past the point of fullness until I felt unwell to kind of ‘self medicate’. You say it’s impossible to gain weight past your set point, but I kept gaining and gaining until I consciously started losing weight.

I dont think I’ve made it sound easy anywhere. If you read my blog posts I talk about just how difficult it is. But it’s much more difficult starving yourself and wasting your time and energy on trying to be smaller – that never has a good outcome, whereas working towards body acceptance means you can then focus energy elsewhere and actually be productive and engage properly in life, relationships, and your passions.

You can gain past your set point, but only if you are eating past comfort on a regular basis. Health is about listening to your hunger and fullness cues (this is much more complex in ED recovery so anyone in recovery reading this and feeling anxious, it’s not that simple for you). Sometimes we go hungry for longer than we should because we dont have time tl grab a bite to eat, and sometimes we eat past fullness because we are at a restaurant etc, but most of the time we eat to hunger and fullness and that’s what balanced and healthy eating is (other factors are obviously involved with healthy eating but I’m only addressing relevant aspect in regards to your message). Losing weight purposefully by restricting food is never healthy for the body. Losing weight because you start listening to your body, and when weight loss isn’t the goal but a side effect of being in touch with your body again, can be healthy.

Ah yes that does make sense. Thank you very much for your response and I think it’s so much more complicated nowadays to actually learn how to listen to your body because of all the conflicting messages about weight and health being bombarded at us. It’s a difficult thing to learn for sure and it’s awesome seeing people like you do well with it, I find it very inspirational!